January 2014 Rocket Ship Ska Trip Archives

OMG, we forgot to play HEPCAT!!! Oh, well, at least Echo Chamber remembered, when it was actually New Years’ Day. To quote from Hep’s Scientific song “Country Time” (got nuthin’ to do with lemonade, btw)… “It was after midnight had come, that the New Year had begun… “ so, if you’re playing along at home, and Hepcat’s holiday classic isn’t on your record shelf, it is on You Tube. Check it out. Crikey, we were even thinking of opening the show with it, too! Oh, well, next week… during Eastern Orthodox Christmas, I believe. Here’s what we didn’t forget: to continue airing our no-repeat collection of “Lollipops” until we run clean out! This week, we had the feisty then-13-year-old Norwegian Jannicke Abrahamsen from her Jannicke 2 release on Busk, from 1991. Running concurrently with the Lollie, GotchaSKAvered has risen the “Ska Cover-of-the-Month Club” from the ashes, appropriately re-inaugurating the feature with “Phoenix City” for all of January. Original moonstomping skins Symarip played the tune this week. Now, has Japanese techno uberproducer Yasutaka Nakata been bit by the ska bug? Perfume’s Nakata-produced “Clockwork” from Level 3 was augmented live on-air by our very own Captain’s vocal percussions, albeit very subtly, blending in with Nakata’s prominently offbeat keyboard (or laptop?) upstrokes, so as to make Mr. Freetime’s chikitups barely audible in the mix. So, you be the judge. Anyway, “Clockwork” completed a revision of the set of “sorta-ska-from-outside-the-scene” we did a few short weeks ago. We had stragglers that weren’t on last week’s Ska 2013 Roundup, a winter-weather advisory from The Dualers (you know the one), and during Sherwood’s Planet a delightfully wacky Kyary Pamyu Pamyu-produced (not Nakata as we’d speculated on-air) instrumental cover of “Take Me Home Country Roads” (yes, John Denver’s!), from an entire album of Kyary-produced (and Ghibli-tied) instrumentals! Who knew? (not us!) A Hal Blaine/Emil Richards “January” mix also made Sherwoood’s, as did Jacqueline Hyde & the Moonfolk and, of course, we had an “Ooh” in the first 1hr:20mn. So Happy New Year from the RSST on KFAI. Keep on tuning in, and staying tuned, and we’ll ya up overnight where the skaffeine flows freely. Later!

OK, so our minds blanked on the Hepcat again, so we’re just gonna let it go already. Time to move on! A 10” 78 from Soweto actually got the “Ooh” going this week, that being “Eddie’s Ska” by the Soweto Stokvel Septette. By the time Sherwood’s was in view, we’d plowed through some Skatalites, Jimmy Cliff, Ken Boothe & Stranger Cole, and all the way from the beaches of California… Annette! Byron Lee, whose “Jamaica Ska” Annette covered, checked in with “Dumplins” and Bob Marley and Prince Buster turned up in the mix. Sherwood played stretchers from new cool collective and Victor Feldman, after opening the Voovie Doo with Shorty Rogers and making two cd players lock up by attempting to feed them Echo’s “Night and Day” …hey, same thing happened to Cozy ‘n’ the Cap’n on “Driving West”… Moving on, Mr. Funn padded his time out with the help of Drain, m-flo, Capsule, Henry Mancini and Cedar Walton. Oh, and Perfume’s hypnotic “23:30” as well. “Cool Benny” Velarde wobble-cha’d us over to the Home Stretch where the no-repeat “Lollipop”-ing continued with Akatz, from Akatz A-Go-Go. A brass band called Les Miserables GotchaSKAvered “Phoenix City” this week, the Froggies 5@5:05’d, the Cap’n took another vocally-percussive whack at Perfume’s “Clockwork” and all was smooooooth sailing up to “The End” and the transition to the merry band of coffeemakers brewing up the Morning Blend. But we’ll be back… tune in and stay tuned!

The “Ooh” Crew dug up an old ska beatmix we’d made sometime back, involving records by everybody from Tracey Dey (“Ska Doo-De-Yah” plus the German cover by Ria Bartok), Don Drummond (“Smiling”), Mango Jones, Bobby Jay, Baba Brooks with Sammy Ismay, and more. The mix was something like 25mn. long, very fun, and something we decided we need to make more of! So we’re going to be periodically peppering future RSST playlists with the occasional prerecorded extended mix set. Sherwood dropped some goodies we haven’t heard from him in a while, by the likes of Piero Umiliani, Özel Turkbas, Michele Legrand, Linda Scott and others, including one Benny Joy. Forward into the Home Stretch and we have a “Lollipop” by Errika & Margarita Brogier, done in mixed English/Greek. In the GotchaSKAvered, Phoenix City this week found itself being played live at the Teatro Armenio in Buenos Aires by an orbiting Skatalites. Cover fever didn’t stop there: the 5@5:05 included “Won’t Back Down,” “Foolish Little Girl,” “Paint It Black,” “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “Show Me the Way” gone Ska-wise. Later on, “Swan Lake” got (Judge) Dread-ified into “Skin Lake.” To hear what else the RSST Crew got up to, tune in… and stay tuned!

We mashed it in the Ooh, discovering Roland Alphonso’s “Full Dread” 45 with the Skatalites (or, as the record’s label would have it, the “Ska-Ta-Lites”) along the way. When “Mr. Hops” drove us into Sherwood’s Planet, Mr. Funn responded with Ferrante & Teicher gone disco, into Emerson Lake & Palmer. And only in Sherwood’s universe does Stan Kenton collide with YMCK and Giorgio Moroder (a.k.a. “The Beepers”)! But now let’s get to the Home Stretch… the funniest “Lollipop” we’ve played since, I dunno, the Aural Exciters… was by Quebecer Jacques Desrosiers. He’s also the first French-Canadian whose “Lollipop” (here titled “C’est Toi Mon Cibole”) we’ve aired since La Famille Staunton. “Phoenix City” was occupied by Prince Buster this week, and he chased out a certain “Ringo” on his version… we’re pretty sure it wasn’t Ms. Shiina or Mr. Starr! But speaking of the latter, his old band The Beatles got the All-Ska treatment for the last hour, starting with… 3 by The Skeatles! Ringo Ska followed up, as did ARTS, Ernest Ranglin, The Skatalites, Skapontas, …oh, and let’s not forget Giuliano Palma & the Bluebeaters. It was pure Skeatlemania and then some! It’s on the archives for the next 2(+?) weeks, so enjoy… ‘til next time, tune in and stay tuned!

Even the RSST universe was impacted by the recent passing of Pete Seeger, and the “Ooh” found us saluting the newly-late folk hero with 3 different ska covers of “If I Had a Hammer” from the early ’70s… Nicky Thomas, Cat Campbell (toasting on the Nicky Thomas cut and issued as “Hammering Version”) and Freddie Notes’ old skinhead outfit The Rudies. Thanks to KFAI’s Jackson Buck for providing the Rudies and Nicky Thomas cuts; the Cat Campbell version we found on YouTube. Now, let’s head over to the Voov… Sherwood found a swinging big-band performance by Yasutaka Nakata’s trio of techno angels Perfume, and followed that up with an example of the production prowess of multi-talented queen-of-kawaii Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (a choice cut from her all-instrumental Ghibli Studio-themed various-artists tribute album identified on the playlist). So, just how kawaii (cute) is Kyary? Well, if kawaii were a martial art, Ms. KPP would by now have been awarded ownership of the black-belt factory! OK, it’s now time for the Home Stretch. First, the Lollipop: as we’re sure you’ll agree, one good “C’est Toi” deserves another, so we answered Jacques Desrosiers’ “Mon Cibole” from last week with a “Mon Idole” this week from Donna Hightower, just before launching into Rockers Express’s spirited take of “Phoenix City” (last of five for January; new GotchaSKAvered Ska Cover-of-the-Month Club selection to be determined next week!) A space-themed 5(+1)@5:05 was marred by a glitchy cd player, so we bumped “Landing on the Moon” by Peter Thomas up into deck 1 where the cut tracked flawlessly. Now let’s drop the big one: we’ve learned that on March 15th, the aforementioned Perfume will take the stage at NHK Hall in Tokyo, out in front of… are you ready?… Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra! Even though we’ve got about as much chance of being there as a cow has of jumping over the moon (oh, where’s Raymond Scott and Dorothy Collins when you really NEED ‘em??? XD) we’re still pumped-as-all-getout that this future gig even exists! To celebrate, we couldn’t resist spinning “Anyakouro” and “Kareshi Boshuu Chuu” back-to-back. What ska-licious news nuggets will we learn by next week? Tune in… and stay tuned!